And the snow came to Abruzzo. Every week end we walked up a hill nearby our house. There was a slope there that I had my eye on. It was the perfect angle, the perfect downward roll. Simply put, if it snowed that hill was mine, perfect to sledge down.

Now that Winter, it snowed in Abruzzo, and everything was covered in magical beauty. The views were amazing and the blue sky made everything seem fresh. But I had only one thing on my mind. Getting to that hill. So we trussed ourselves up in Winter gear and off we went to that hill.

We arrived but to our horror a bunch of kids got their before us. Imagine my horror looking at what should have been pristine clean white snow with horrible sledge marks all over it. It seems I was not the only one with that hill in mind for snowy Abruzzo weather.

Not to mention the fact that we were hugely upstaged. The Italian kids were all dressed from top to toe in perfectly fitting ski gear. This made our pacamacs look woefully underprepared and shabby. They even had snow boots on. I mean Italy is a hot country, where do they keep all this perfect Winter gear??? I was flummoxed.

Next came the third challenge for this day. We had no sledge…… This was a toughy. How would we get down the hill? But we did not let our British sprit be deterred. We simply improvised. Under our house we had 2 babies baths, which we took with us to see if they would work.

My husband and I grabbed our baby baths and ascended the hill. With the Italian kids whizzing past us we were getting out of breath, it seems the hill was steeper than we imagined at first….

We got there in the end and with pride we set down our baby baths. We climbed in. And with a small push off we went. PRECISELY NOWHERE!! The front of the baby baths just sunk into the snow and we ground to a halt, stuck to the side of the hill. By this time the Italian kids were laughing at us and we were too ashamed to think of any other options. Deflated and dejected, we walked back down. My images of us gliding down the perfect snow on the perfect Abruzzo hill melted more quickly than ice in the sun……

So we quickly found a better alternative, we went home made a snowman in the garden and celebrated our victorious snowman with hot chocolate and marshmallows, could there be any greater comfort on a snowy day?

This year when it snowed we were in our new house. Our new house is surrounded by trees and they were all beautifully dusted with snow shimmering in the moonlight. We spent a magical night with the stove on full blast emanating warmth and sharing a bottle of prosecco and a hearty warming dinner, while listening to soft music. We kept sneaking outside to see watch the snow get deeper and deeper to hear the crunch underfoot and see out footsteps covered within seconds. The snowflakes were huge and our little kitten kept on playing with them as they floated down. Magical, simply magical memories filled with wonderment.